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AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon Redshift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Redshift
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (5th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (8th)
AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon Redshift is 7.2%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 4.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Lake Formation4.9%
Amazon Redshift7.2%
Other87.9%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

PJ
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Performance optimization and scaling adaptations enable efficient data management
Amazon Redshift does not work alone and requires integration with other AWS tools like S3 and Glue for a complete ecosystem. They should bring the entire ETL data management process into Amazon Redshift. Either they should move Amazon Redshift under Glue, or Glue should be brought under Amazon Redshift. The initial setup could also be improved, particularly in terms of sizing, as it requires trial and error to get right.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's scalable because it's on the cloud."
"The most valuable features are that it's easy to set up and easy to connect the many tools that connect to it."
"I like the cost-benefit ratio, meaning that it is as easy to use as it is powerful and well-performing."
"Redshift COPY command, because much of my work involved helping customers migrate large amounts of data into Redshift."
"Easy to build out our snowflake design and load data."
"I have primarily used the Redshift Spectrum feature and found it most valuable."
"Amazon Redshift is very fast. It has really good response times. It's very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the scalability, as it grows according to our needs."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"There is no doubt that this place exceeded my expectations with its incredible ambiance, attentive service, and mouthwatering menu."
"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."
"The integration of AWS Lake Formation with the IAM for authentication and authorization is very good; I didn't have any problems in the setup and thought it was simple."
"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."
 

Cons

"I would like to improve the pricing and the simplicity of using this solution."
"I rate their support seven out of ten. It's costly when you enable support. The price is high for technical support."
"The technical support should be better in terms of their knowledge, and they should be more customer-friendly."
"Query compilation time needs a lot of improvement for cases where you are generating queries dynamically."
"The initial deployment was complex."
"Infinite storage is available in Snowflake and is not available in Redshift."
"The solution could improve in handling more data formats and more native support for RDF."
"Pricing is one of the things that it could improve. It should be more competitive."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."
"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."
"I would appreciate online support, which I don't have access to in my corporation at the bank, so that is important."
"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."
"I think AWS Lake Formation could improve by enforcing the least privilege by design, moving from ad hoc grants to role-based access controls."
"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has very competitive pricing."
"The part that I like best is that you only pay for what you are using."
"The product is cheap considering what it provides; I rate it five out of five for affordability."
"At the moment, pricing is a little bit on the higher side, although it depends on the size of the company."
"If you want a fixed price, an to not worry about every query, but you need to manage your nodes personally, use Redshift."
"The cost must be improved."
"This solution implements the pay-as-you-use model, so no license. Pricing could be cheaper."
"It's not very pricey compared to other tools. I would rate the price as 5 out of 10."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Media Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Amazon Redshift?
The tool's most valuable feature is its parallel processing capability. It can handle massive amounts of data, even when pushing hundreds of terabytes, and its scaling capabilities are good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Liberty Mutual Insurance, 4Cite Marketing, BrandVerity, DNA Plc, Sirocco Systems, Gainsight, Blue 449
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon Redshift and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.